


Remember the Roses

by Loudest_Voice



Series: Fire Emblem: 3H fics [4]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Almyra Headcanons, Claude Reads Loog/Kyphon Fanfic, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Homesickness, Illiteracy, Loneliness, Peasant Character, Pre-Canon, This One Was Supposed to Have More Canon Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 14:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loudest_Voice/pseuds/Loudest_Voice
Summary: Claude tries to make friends in his grandfather's house and also finds a new historical OTP.





	Remember the Roses

**Author's Note:**

> This game is getting me back into writing despite life dragging me kicking and screaming into actual adulthood. Takes place directly after "Delicate and Green", but you don't have to read that to follow this. 
> 
> Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta reading this. I tinkered while posting so any mistakes are my own.

Duke Riegan's mansion is a tomb. Claude has never been so lonely in his entire life, and it's only been a week since his arrival in Fodlan. It feels like a lifetime has passed him by. The servants don't make eye contact with him. He's seen dozens. (Maybe? They all look slightly alike and dress in similar clothes, and seem to take pride in doing absolutely nothing creative with their hair.) But he knows only Merla, who brings him food twice a day and answers all his questions with as little detail as possible. Claude can't figure out if that's because she doesn't like him, or simply because Fodlan servants are not meant to converse with their nobles.

There are knights patrolling the castle and the villages in its outskirts, all making use of Duke Riegan's training grounds. Claude has seen them diligently going through their sword, axe, brawling, and lance drills. He's discreetly observed a few sparring matches, envious as the cooling fall winds seep through his silk clothes. It would be warmer if he could spar. Warmer in more ways than one. The participants have displayed skills ranging from mediocre to awe-inspiring. Duke Riegan obviously employs an exemplar army, and surely some of them would make good company.

But Duke Riegan had not officially introduced to Claude. To anyone. The old man seems lost in a fog of bitterness. He says little during the daily chess games that he insists on playing against Claude, and those have gotten pretty boring. Claude hasn't lost one since the day of his arrival, when Duke Riegan taught him the rules of the game. His grandfather appears to have exactly one chess strategy (push the queen into the field early and take out as many enemy pieces as possible), which Claude figured out in two games. Over the last week, he has developed dozens of counterattacks. He had tried to offer a few strategies that might satisfy the old man, but he'd been called an impertinent mutt and dismissed for the night for his troubles.

At least Duke Riegan is a graceful loser. That's as grandiose a compliment as Claud can muster. He hasn't asked Claude about his mother and got outright aggressive the one time Claude edged towards mentioning her. The old bastard simply refuses to talk. To _anyone_, it seems.

Where are Duke Riegan's fellow nobles? Advisors? Friends? People who interact with him at all? _Anyone_. Where are the man's retainers? He doesn't even talk to merchants, as far as Claude can see. One of the servants must be in charge of keeping Duke Riegan's tomb-like castle stocked with food, at the very least, because Claude's certainly not hunting his food. Not even once a day. It's not just boring, it makes Claude jittery and anxious that he will forget all his skills as a hunter and tracker. Back in Almyra, he made it a point to hunt for at least one meal a day.

_It's important to know where your meat is coming from, that something had to die to keep you alive. That you had to kill something to live. That's the way of the world._

Claude, quick-mouthed since he learned to talk, had asked his father why. As far as he'd ever known, food was a constant. If he asked for it, someone got it for him. _You are a prince, my son, but that is a word men made up. It's a fleeting thing. Being a hunter is not. Men do not make hunters. Nature makes hunters._

Claude had not been sold on that, but he sure hopes it's true now. He practices with his bow for at least two hours daily, but it's not the same as being out in the wild, hunting a target with a will of its own. It's so _boring_ to hit the same targets over and over and over and _over_. There's only so many times he can cleave an arrow at the bullseye with another arrow before it gets old. He can only experiment with his bowstring so much before the exercise damages his bowstring. Brawling against a post does little except hurt his hands. He's never going to get better with short range weapons without a sparring partner. Something needs to change, or Claude will go stir-crazy.

"Can I speak to the knights?" Claude asks Duke Riegan during their chess game that afternoon.

"Do not trouble me with your trifles!" admonishes Duke Riegan, moving one of his knights in range of one of Claude's pawns. He must be going senile.

So much for that. Claude would just go talk to the knights, but it's not proper to approach a warrior in their own land without a proper introduction. In Almyra, it would be considered a bold challenge at best, and a vicious insult at worst. Death duels have been fought over less, and though he doubts it would escalate to that in Fodlan, Claude's goal is to find a sparring partner. Or at least someone who will talk to him. He can't do that if everyone decides that he's a bore. Being of two races already puts him at enough of a social disadvantage.

To pass the time, he observes the knights patrolling the castle walls. Well, not just to pass the time. If things don't improve, he will have to disappear and prove his worth to his father some other way. How can he earn Duke Riegan's respect if the man won't talk to him or even let him _do_ anything?

Two days later, he has a basic layout of the castle and an exit strategy. He doesn't enter any room where he has not been invited (which limits him to his room, the kitchens, the study where Duke Riegan likes to lose chess matches, and the training grounds). Sneaking into other places would hardly pose a challenge, but Claude is trying to maintain some modicum of regard for his grandfather's castle. It's not possible to earn a person's respect without first showing them some. Not in Almyra, anyway.

The next day, while he mechanically trains alone, something occurs to him. The servants don't look him in the eye. They don't even look at the general vicinity of his face. And he hates the ridiculous clothes that Duke Riegan had delivered to his room. Silk feels wonderful against his skin, but only at first. Even the most mildly strenuous drill makes him sweat, and then it soaks into the silk, which plasters itself over his body like sandpaper. He misses his simple and practical cotton clothes. And experiment would at least give him a break from the itching.

Claude takes out his old outfit that afternoon, before making his daily trek to the kitchens. The first cook he spots, one who's always by the same sink when he visits, looks at his face and frowns. She straightens up, taking the chance to rub her ear against her shoulder.

"You new?" she asks, not angry. Not anything. Her blond eyebrows are furrowed in simple curiosity. She actually _does not recognize him._

Claude is the only Almyran in the castle.

"I'm a new squire," says Claude.

"A mutt like you?" she asks, matter-of-factly.

Only Duke Riegan calls him a mutt when he's dressed in noble silks.

Claude shrugs and gestures at his quiver of bows.

"Squire to who?" she asks.

"Duke Riegan."

The girls lets out a snort, wiping her hands on her apron and gesturing him forward. "Mutt, Duke Riegan isn't a knight. You can only be a squire to a _knight_. At most, you can pass as a scout or a private."

"Why are you telling me?" asks Claude. She had not even bothered to note his presence before now.

She smiles down at him, green eyes looking almost sad. So many people have green eyes in Duke Riegan's castle. Only Claude and his mother had them back home.

"If you got enough wits to sneak into the army looking like you do, then I hope you sneak all the way up to Enbarr itself and make a fool of the Adrestian Emperor."

Claude considers that, making a mental note that random Alliance citizens have some vitriol towards their allegedly hegemonic neighbor. Maybe. It's not like he's talked to enough people to make a decent guess.

"What's your name?" asks Claude.

"I'm Emmie," she says, looking back to the sink. "You?"

"Claude."

* * *

"Merla, there must be a library somewhere in this castle," Claude says that night as she brings him dinner. If the way Duke Riegan speaks to the servants is anything to go by, it's probably best that he phrases his questions as commands.

"Multiple, my lord," she says.

"Right," he says. "Tomorrow afternoon, when there's better lighting, you will take me to one of them."

"We have candles, my lord," says Merla.

Claude pauses. It's not good practice to waste resources, not to mention that fire is a beacon for enemies and hungry wolves. But he is in a heavily-guarded Fodlan castle, playing at being a Fodlan noble. He is meant to waste things.

It's an obvious excuse to escape his boredom, but Claude can't stand another second of inaction. "Alright, let's go now."

She takes him to a musty chamber in the eastern corner of the castle. Claude's almost afraid that the very air will ignite against the candelabra, considering all the cobwebs in every corner.

"Forgive my eagerness, my lord," says Merla, curtsying deeply. "No one has been in this library since. . ."

Since Claude's mother left, probably.

"If you would only give me a chance to have it cleaned for you," says Merla.

"No, that's fine," says Claude, swiping at some dust floating about his nose. "This is fine. You can retire for the night, Merla. I'll make my own way back to my room when I'm done here."

Five rows of bookcases taller than an adult man occupy the library. There is a single desk by a wide window. Claude pauses to admire the full moon, then starts examining the books. If there's an organizational scheme to the library, Claude cannot make sense of it. The books are not organized by publication date, author names, titles, or subject. Claude picks them at random, and reads a few paragraphs at various points.

_During the decades before Loog's rebellion, the Adrestian Emperor prepared for an assault against the Almyran hordes. The people of the region that currently makes up The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus shouldered the brunt of the military and financial costs. This was not unusual for the times, as the northern lands of Fodland are notorious for arid lands and viciously cold winters. Their people relied on Adrestian supplies to get through the coldest months of the year, and in exchange the provided the Empire with foot soldiers for their military conquests. They had no real conflict, or even knowledge, of the supposed Almyran threat, but they were intimately familiar with the dangers of losing Adrestian support during the dead of winter._

That's not the way the story goes back in Almyra. Faerghus is allegedly brimming with battle-hungry warlords with none of Almyra's respect for nature (although, they say that every nation in the continent), and would accept any excuse to go to battle against anyone. Claude closes the book, planning to examine it more closely later, and picks another one at random.

_"So many of our people will die in a foreign war, fighting people we've barely heard of," says Kyphon. _

_"And how many will die if do not lend the Empire our aid?" demands Loog. "Dying in battle is at least honorable."_

_"There's _nothing _honorable about dying in a war without cause," Kyphon says urgently. "The Almyrans know nothing of us and we know nothing of them. If you seek to die in a blaze of glory, then turn your lance against the Emperor."_

Only Almyran discipline forces Claude back to his room before the candles run out. Just because he isn't currently sparring against adequate opponents does not mean that he can slack off. For all he knows, hell will break loose tomorrow and he'll have to fight off a pack of hellhounds.

The library makes Claude's days a little more bearable. A lot more bearable. He can't glean a cataloguing system for the books (probably, there isn't one). Most of the books are about the fracturing of the Adrestian Empire and the birth of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Claude knows little of Fodlan's history, but he doubts there is anyone in the continent who hasn't heard of the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, or Loog's legendary berserker rage. Claude almost stops reading the books for fear of polluting his mind with whimsical nonsense about Loog and his vicious swordmaster friend (or lover?), Kyphon, before he can get his hands on more objective history texts. But he is so very bored, and Fodlan writers have such a flair for the dramatic.

For the next few days, there's a welcome urgency to his training. And to his repetitive chess battles with Duke Riegan. He wants to be done as soon as possible so he has a little more time to devour the books. He's just up to the bit where Loog seeks to ally with the Church of Seiros, at Kyphon's behest. To make the exercise slightly less pointless, Claude has asked Merla for scroll and ink, and has been keeping some rough timeline of the legendary war. If nothing else, he might have some fun in the future trying to figure out how much his grandfather's books left out. And how much they embellished.

"Why aren't there more books about the Leicester Alliance in here?" Claude mumbles to himself one night. He's beginning to suspect he took a wrong turn out in the mountains and ended up in the library where Faerghus stores its propaganda.

There's no one around to answer. Claude goes back to reading before the loneliness swallows him.

Emmie still talks to him, most days. He has persuaded her to leave her post for a few minutes by helping with her cleaning, then taken her to a keep overlooking the mountain ranges that separate Fodlan from Almyra. The girl is worryingly unfit, barely able to climb enough floors so they can enjoy a good view. She is of a decent weight - more than decent, actually - so it must be due to a lack of meat in her diet.

"I don't know how a skinny thing like you has so much energy," she pants, while Claude waits for her almost an entire flight of stairs higher, not even slightly out of breath.

"I'm not _skinny_," he protests. "I'm _fit_."

"Whatever, that bow's just for show."

Claude rolls his eyes. "Come on, just a few more flights."

Emmie grunts, picks up her skirts, and follows him. Ugly patches of sweat are visible around the collar and underarms of her plain grey shirt by the time they make it to the top of the keep. The glare she's been shooting Claude's way vanishes the moment her gaze follows his gesture towards the window. Slowly, Emmie drops her skirts and takes hesitant steps forward.

"That's The Neverending Pinnacle," says Claude, pointing at the tallest peak. The top is obscured by clouds. "Only the strongest warriors can make it there. It's so high that the air becomes thin and makes wyverns too vicious to ride."

Emmie doesn't respond.

Claude considers asking if she's listening, but he finds that he doesn't care. He wants to talk of Almyra, so he goes on, naming the mountain ranges and what trial an Almyran warrior must overcome for each one of them. Emmie sighs at one point, and lets her head fall on his shoulder. After a second, Claude keeps talking, but for her benefit rather than his own.

She doesn't even know how to read. While she can recognize the names of most significant historical figures in Fodlan, she knows next to no details, and cannot corroborate or deny what Claude reads in the fiction library. The amount of geography she knows is pitiful. Her green eyes show a flicker of life only when she speaks of the Church of Seiros and the hope that it brings to the people.

"Do they help you?" Claude asks her.

"What do you mean?" Emmie frowns, lifting her head off Claude's shoulder and stepping away from him. The finger that had been twirling her blonde curls stops and drops to her side.

"The priests," says Claude. "Or the Knights of Seiros? Do they help you? Give you food? Clean water? Clothes? Medicine? Something?"

There is poverty in Almyra, as there is everywhere in the world, but not the absurd degree that Claude has witnessed in Fodlan. The peasants in Almyra can make heads and tails out of a map. Most can use a simple bow and get some meat for their families. They know how to keep their drinking water clean. As Claude made his way through the outskirts of Fodlan, the few peasants who dared to speak to him knew little beyond a handful of inane prayers to Saint Seiros.

"Saint Seiros gives me _hope_," says Emmie, obviously upset.

Claude does not mean to upset her.

"But what is hope?" But he is also very curious.

Emmie doesn't have a good answer, and she doesn't like that she doesn't have a good answer. Tears well up in her eyes.

"You don't know anything!" she yells.

Claude sighs and looks at his feet in frustration.

"You thrice-damned Almyran _mutt_."

The slur hurts, as much as it always does, but it's a debilitating stab rather than an infuriating one. Emmie is only parroting what she's heard her whole life. She probably believes it too, like a child believes that a fairy will give them a token for a fallen milk tooth.

When Claude doesn't respond, or even look her way, Emmie sobs and storms towards the stairs.

Claude stares at the mountains for a few more moments, silent and breathing in and out slowly. He needs to follow Emmie down the stairs. Chances are she won't know how to get back to the kitchens by herself.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm gonna write about Dimitri and Felix being stupid at each other next.


End file.
